this week, a man says to me, “do you think that you make your sexuality your whole identity?” i am familiar with this question; i’ve heard it before.
i think about how this man freely talks about the women he fucks. he talks about his ex-wife, his flings. he speaks about friendships, his divorce, biking through turkey to land in bulgaria. i’ve been an active participant in the conversation, asking questions, answering them in response. it’s been a back and forth. i don’t remember the sentences leading up to this question, but i start thinking later that night: do i? am i able to have conversations about something else?
the answer is certainly yes. i have a bachelor’s degree in religion, i have traveled across four continents, i have worked as a barista and a bottle girl and a professional matchmaker and a political canvasser and a preschool teacher. i grew up in the midwest and now live in california. i have gone on tour with my band. i love to watch movies and eat tomato-based dishes and get tattoos and learn languages. i know i have things to talk about; other identities.
but: i cannot disentangle my sexuality from my view on the world. and perhaps that means i make it my identity; if that’s the case, then so be it. but if i don’t ‘make it my whole identity,’ then you, almost certainly, won’t see this thing about me that affects the way i see the world, interact with people, carry myself. it’s the history i align with, the politics inside of which i shroud myself. it’s the friends i see myself in, the celebrities who echo my lived experience, the festivals who have other attendants like me, the lyrics that use the right pronouns, the books and movies and tv shows that create inside jokes (there is a reason nearly every lesbian has seen ‘the L word’).
why are you in a LESBIAN band? why not just a band?
why do you tell everyone you are a LESBIAN?
why are most of your friends LESBIANS?
why do you have to talk about being a LESBIAN?
familiar questions. the word is spit, like it is a dirty word. like it is one seen only in porn, like we cannot say it. like it is not magical, life-saving, truth.
and to this i respond with other questions: have you ever made a joke about men at brunch with your friends, and everyone laughs, knowing the nature of men and their manhood? have you talked crudely about the way he fucked you? have you debriefed before, in the bathroom during, and in your bedroom after a date on facetime with a friend who knows what it’s like? have you watched a movie about a man and a woman? have you gone on a date at a bar or a cafe or a restaurant, and have you enjoyed the anonymity of it?
what if you could no longer brunch, or when you went to brunch and spoke of your date, people awkwardly shift and laugh, then change the subject? what if, when you went to a bar on a date, people assume you are friends? what if you put your arm around your lover, and someone moves seats?
in this moment, you may be thinking: i would not pay much mind to it.
but for how long can you pay so little mind? for how long can you be invisible? for how long can you correct others?
have you wanted the world to reflect your experience, and day after day after day, it does not?
many people are surrounded by gay men, but don’t know a lesbian — i know i am the only lesbian many people know. there are now thirty lesbian bars in the united states, a rise from twenty-seven in 2022 (and, of course, a significant dip from the two-hundred-plus of the 1980s). we opened our first two in los angeles last year; one is a wine bar where the cheapest drink is seventeen dollars and it closes at 10 pm, the other is a small bar that is always packed like sardines, and it’s attached to a super 8, next to nothing else.
can you imagine for a moment having just one bar within hours’ driving distance where you can openly flirt, where you aren’t always answering questions about dating and sex and your thoughts on trans people in sports?
at the gossip grill in san diego, the closest lesbian bar to me in 2022, a man thirty years my senior slides his hand up my dress at the bar and then disappears into the crowd.
a new friend asks about my exes, using the pronoun ‘he’. while this person is not incorrect — i have dated men, and i have dated transmascs and trans men — i do not bother to correct.
in california, my lover and i check into a motel 6. the man takes one look at us and says, “there’s been a mistake. i’ll give you a room with two beds.” we sleep together in one twin bed.
in mexico, a man tells me that he thinks we shouldn’t have all this separation; it fosters difference, not togetherness, he says. i think about west hollywood, in los angeles, which is teeming with bars for gay men. i think about the people i meet who say “i support gay rights, but i don’t want to hang out in a gay bar.” i think about every bar that is full of people like themselves. i walk through a bar in san diego and feel the eyes of men on me, hear their murmurs as i walk by. it’s not even a question or a thought at all; through the eyes of these people, everyone in the bar could be a contender. i am a contender. in these bars, i am often alone. i am the only one like me in there. i am alone. i am alone.
i am subject to lines of questioning about sex. i stay late in meetings and field questions from coworkers about genitalia, about sex toys, about language. i see the relief in their eyes when they see they can ask questions openly, when they realize they are talking with someone who might have actually used a strap-on. i see their eyes glaze over as they picture us scissoring. they ask if i have slept with trans people. they make assumptions i will not repeat here. they ask if i have ever had sex with a man. other people overhear and stay politely quiet. they are not confrontational. they are secretly curious.
on a beach in california, walking hand in hand with a woman seven inches taller than me. we kiss. an older woman laughs and asks if we are twins.
at the doctor, getting an MRI with contrast. i have a lump where i should not, and i am scared, and no one can come in with me, because it is 2020 and we are in a pandemic. the kind older nurse senses my fear, and makes small talk: “do you have a boyfriend?” ten thoughts hit me at once: what if i tell her i am gay, and she trips over her words, and apologizes, and then it is awkward? what if i tell her i am gay and she is surprised and asks me about it? what if she is homophobic, and what if she implicitly does something wrong during this exam? we are in suburban minnesota — she could fall either way. she could say to herself it is okay, but i do not want to touch. she might not realize she feels this way.
my first partner goes to get an STI test, and the doctor does not know what tests to give. it is 2018.
i am with a woman in hollywood, and we are holding hands. men stare. women stare. children stare. “everyone in north america doesn’t care about your sexuality,” or “coming out in the united states is so easy.” it is easier in some parts, but hollywood is perhaps seen as the center of liberalism, and still, there will be stares. there will always be stares. there will always be someone picturing you two having sex in their minds. there will still be men wanting to watch, there will still be women calling, “i could NEVER live without dick!” their ignorance alienating trans women in their wake.
women get drunk and whisper to me they want to date a girl but could never go down on one. they say sex with their boyfriend is terrible and they’ve heard it’s better with women, and they want to know the truth. they cry and say they might be gay. my life is only a beacon of light for another; it never just is. my existence is brave; i never just am. i am, sometimes, the first lesbian people have known. i am the only entrypoint into a world of mystery for many. they take their opportunity to ask questions and validate their fears.
i think about the lack of older lesbians i am exposed to, let alone interact with. i don’t know an older lesbian couple. i think about the first time i saw more than one lesbian couple in their forties in my vicinity walking down the street holding hands (in san francisco, 2023). i think about a lesbian festival i attended in september of that year, where i met so many lesbians from all over the world. we are in every industry, in every country, look like anyone else.
i remember when i met seventy-plus lesbians for the first time at a panel at a jewish temple on the AIDS pandemic. i remember our intergenerational jokes, the things we implicitly understand about one another, the way we speak about our lovers. there is a warmth of knowing we have all experienced the same feelings. i compliment one woman’s earrings — miniature birkenstocks –; she tells me her ex-partner made them for her. we laugh about it. she gives me her number for networking reasons, saying “that’s me on the top there,” then pauses, saying, “well, not that kind of top,” and winks. we laugh. i think that, if i knew other gay women when i was fifteen, maybe the world would not have felt so harsh.
did you know that, if i one day bear a child, my spouse will have to adopt them, even if we are legally married at the time of the birth?
the fact of the matter is that you don’t see us unless we make it our identity. i must make it a part of my identity or you won’t see this piece of me at all. so much of me is so invisible, all of the time; it simply does not occur to people in the first place that i am different from them. it doesn’t occur to them that they could be like me. i must talk about it, so i can gauge your comfort level with me. i must ask for lesbian bars, so i have a place to flirt and dance and kiss and get drinks with friends so i am not stared at or touched. i don’t want to go to your bar— your bar being every other bar. i must have lesbian friends, so i am able to talk and laugh openly about dates and sex and i’m able to muse aloud and have my experience be reflected back at me from others’; an experience you have never questioned.
this week is for all of us screaming PLEASE SEE ME. PLEASE TAKE SOME OF THE WORK AWAY. PLEASE LET ME BE NORMAL. and it is because of the lesbians who came before me, of trans women, it’s because of fat lesbians and Black lesbians and lesbians of color, because of so many other lesbians that i am able to exist at all. i do not pretend that it is not a privilege to be able to hide when necessary; so many are not afforded this. but it is a double-edged sword: i can hide, but i am hidden, too. please let us have bars, please ask about my girlfriend, please speak to me the way you’d speak to someone else. please don’t make me keep living in these moments of limbo where you have to chew and swallow the reality that you assumed incorrectly, and now i must make you feel better about it, because you thought yourself an ally. please understand the necessity of days of remembrances and of weeks of celebrations and of pride — please see me. please see me. please see me.
